National College of Public Administration and Governance during a lecture she conducted with a cross-section of the community titled “Iskul-Bukol: the 2014 national budget and its implications to Negros Oriental.

She called on negrenses to ask their representatives in Congress to report as to what they are doing to get more budget for the province to reduce poverty incidence.

2009 statistics showed Negros Oriental remains in the top ten of the 16 poorest provinces all over the country, and that most of the municipalities with high poverty incidence are located in the first district with Bindoy topping the list with 59.9 percent while Dumaguete City as the least poor with only 7.4 percent.

Briones said that if not of Dumaguete, the poverty incidence in Negros Oriental would have gone higher.

Briones considers this a challenge not only to local chief exectives but to everybody if only to change the image of the province. She enjoins negrenses to choose the right persons to defend them in congress especially in getting the right budget.

Of the 16, ten are from Mindanao, namely, Lanao del Sur with 67.3 % poverty incidence, Maguindanao, Zamboanga del Norte, Sarangani, North Cotabato, Bukidnon, Lanal del Norte, Camiguin, Sultan Kudarat and Sulu.Only two comes from Luzon, namely, Apayao and Masbate, and yet their allocation is more than half of the 2014 national budget, while the three provinces in Samar and Negros Oriental are the poorest in Central Visayas.

Meanwhile, Central Visayas has the lowest budget allocation in terms of the regionalized portion of the 2014 national budget with P224.7 billion or 18% of the total pie.

The highest is Luzon with P726 billion or 58% followed by Mindanao with P301.1 billion or 24%, according to records coming from the National Statistics Coordination Board.